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10 Down – 30 To Go

After a relatively quiet week upon my return home from the epic outing on Mt. Jefferson, it was time to return to the hills. I am very happy to report that Craig is mending well (his ribs were, in fact, broken). Although he’s still feeling a bit roughed up (as one might expect), it appears that he’ll be back at it in no time, which is great news for all of us that were involved. Happy healing, buddy!

In order to ease back into things, I chose to get in some altitude work while not doing anything exceptionally challenging. For the past two weekends I’ve been sticking to the “dog routes” on some of Colorado’s beautiful 14,000’+ peaks (the 14-ers). Camden has been my steady companion on these outings and has completed three 14-ers already. That’s more than a lot of people in Colorado can claim, so he has certainly earned his mountain-dog stripes as of late.

Carla joined us for a quick 4.5 mile round-trip hike up the west ridge of Mt. Evans (14,264′) via Mt. Spalding (13,842′) on a beautiful Saturday morning. We successfully got up and down prior to the midday thunderstorms moving in on us. Camden and I repeated this success this past Saturday on Grays Peak (14,270′) and Torreys Peak (14,267′) in an 8+ mile day with 3,600′ of vertical gain in just over 4 hours, so he’s a pretty efficient climber on Class 2 terrain. It looks like he’s going to be my climbing buddy on many of the 30 peaks that I have left to complete my self-imposed 40 peaks in 40 weeks challenge, at least on those that are Class 2 or below.